Metallica: Ranking Every Album’s Last Song
4. Spit Out The Bone - Hardwired… To Self-Destruct
The band's most recent album, 2016's Hardwired... To Self-Destruct, rounded out with this track, which makes "Spit Out The Bone" the last Metallica song chronologically.
It's a huge song to finish off the album, spending over a minute of its runtime on its intro of chugging guitars and thumping drums. As the name would imply, it's a dark track in every sense of the word. The lyrics, the music, the aura, even the music video is slightly creepy.
In other words, it's exactly what some fans want from their Metallica.
James Hetfield has stated this song is all about how the human race could be much more efficient if it allowed computers to help it. The title alludes to the protagonist's desire to remove his body of bone in order to replace it with technology. Perhaps a harrowing look into a not-so-distant future...
This modern twist on a classic Metallica formula perfectly encapsulates what Hardwired was all about. It was a signal to the rest of the world that, whilst they have their formula, Metallica can keep up with times and still know how to close out an album over three decades after the release of their first.